


Navigating this

by oviparous



Series: Ojisan Idol [2]
Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Idols, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, self-actualization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 19:43:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10170392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oviparous/pseuds/oviparous
Summary: The story of how Ohno Satoshi's family was a driving force behind his debut as a 38-year-old idol.Contains spoilers for Part 1.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Character note: 'Sadao' is Abe Sadao, but Natsumi and Yurika are made up. I also avoided using Ohno's sister's actual name.
> 
> Originally posted on Livejournal, after I decided to remix my own fic. :)

It’s raining, just a little bit. Ohno is convinced his brother-in-law has the ability to summon rain; that’s why he tries to go fishing with Sadao whenever he can, because rain translates to more catch, plus hanging out with Sadao is always a treat. It’s one of the reasons why they opened the fishing tackle store together — they both love fishing and get along fabulously. Ohno has been looking forward to this trip for weeks.

Yet he feels kind of sad too, because Natsumi isn’t around anymore. That in itself is weird because she never went with them, but she used to pack onigiri for Sadao to bring along and share, and the lack of such sustenance today reminds Ohno that his sister is gone now. Ohno wonders if Sadao will ever remarry, and if that happens, would he still call Sadao ‘Nii-san’, and would things be awkward between him and Sadao’s new partner? He is Sadao’s business associate, but he’s also the brother of Sadao’s dead wife.

Ohno doesn’t like thinking about these things, but he can’t help it today because Yurika is here too, and Yurika reminds everyone of her mother: she's gentle, thoroughly nerdy, with a laugh that escalates in pitch. Yurika even has an Ohno Face — Sadao came up with the term after meeting Ohno’s family for the first time and noticing how Natsumi and Ohno looked very much like their parents.

Yurika has an elder brother, Shunya, who is 21 and attending university in Tottori. He doesn’t have an Ohno Face, but he’s got Sadao’s.

As he looks at Sadao and Yurika, Ohno thinks about how lucky he is. He grew up in a close-knit family, and his sister emulated their parents by creating a similar dynamic for hers. He isn’t married but he reckons that someday he’d like to have a family like this. Maybe they’d all have Ohno Faces. 

Hopefully his wife wouldn’t get cancer. Hopefully _he_ wouldn’t get cancer.

They’re on a boat now. The rain is letting up, much to Ohno’s disappointment. Sadao has just finished dropping the anchor and Ohno is sitting in a chair, adjusting the drag on his reel.

Yurika comes over with the tackle box.

“Hey, Satoji. Pick a lure for me please?”

Up until Shunya was two, Sadao and Natsumi had recommended the address of ‘Satoshi-jiji’ for Ohno, but it was too much of a mouthful for a toddler and it became ‘Satoji’. Yurika copied her brother, so Ohno is pretty much stuck with ‘Satoji’ for life.

He loves it, though.

“Isn’t this your third trip?” he teases. “I thought we’ve taught you everything. You should be able to pick your own lures.”

Yurika cocks her head, such a spitting image of her mother that it stops Ohno’s heart for a beat.

“I have my own fishing superstitions, okay? Go on, pick one.”

Ohno chooses a sinking twitch bait and hands it to his niece. She thanks him before blurting out:

“Do you still dance?”

This is unexpected. Ohno finds Yurika’s expression adorable. He looks to Sadao, who shrugs, a smile on his face.

“Sometimes, in my room. Does that count?” Ohno answers.

Yurika sits in the chair across from him, her bulky life jacket making squeaking noises as she leans forward. Ohno can see that she’s blushing.

“I have to do this thing…” She hesitates and pulls out her phone. She plays a video and hands the phone to Ohno. Six girls are dancing to a song Ohno can’t recall the name of, but he knows it’s been playing everywhere lately. It’s one of those teenybopper sugary pop tunes.

“The photography club is going to dance at the school festival and I have to remember this girl’s part by Friday,” explains Yurika, pointing to a dancer who's wearing a yellow skirt.

“I can’t do it,” she deadpans. “I tried last night but it seems like my brain can’t translate the moves from video to limb, and Dad was no help, so.”

She looks hopefully at Ohno. He puts down his rod, gets up from his chair, replays the video. Studying the girl in yellow, Ohno replicates her moves, though it’s a bit wobbly on the boat and he flounders a little.

When he looks up from the screen Yurika is prostrate on the deck, calling him ‘Master’ and asking him to take her in as his disciple. Ohno thinks she’s the funniest high schooler he’s ever known and it cracks him up so hard he has to hold his side, but Sadao comes and joins Yurika in making the obeisance and Ohno just can’t stop laughing.

***

It’s Tuesday evening. Yurika has come to the shop for her dance lesson and Ohno can see that in spite of her Ohno Face she really is Sadao’s daughter — the two left feet gene is strong.

“Kick, point, shoulder shrug — no, Yurika, you have to sorta jab your toes on the floor after you kick.”

Yurika looks frustrated, but she doesn’t complain.

“Okay. Kick, jab toes… What’s the next move again?”

“Move your shoulders.”

“Right.” She tries the moves. “Like this?”

“Almost.”

Yurika heaves a sigh.

Ohno shakes his head, trying to figure out how he can help Yurika get it right, and then it strikes him.

He has Yurika help him push a couple of rod racks to the side, and they stand in front of the shop window. It’s dark outside and they can see their reflection clearly in the wall-length glass.

“Check your movements in the mirror,” he instructs, before they begin again.

***

A month later, Ohno, his parents and Sadao attend Yurika’s school festival to watch her dance. In the three minutes that she’s owning Yellow Skirt’s moves on stage, Ohno has never felt prouder of a person. He knows most of the effort is hers, of course, but he also knows she couldn’t have done it without him.

The euphoria lasts the whole day.

***

Autumn rolls around. Sadao has found a new hobby — cooking — and has been practicing a lot during the daytime lulls. This means there’s always a lot of food at the end of the day, and Ohno ends up eating all his meals at the shop. Yurika comes over straight after school on some days, rating her dad’s cooking and making fancy food requests.

“She was the more distant one, you know. Before Natsumi died,” Sadao says to Ohno that afternoon as he mixes herbs into ground meat. “Shunya would come to us for advice and suggest family trips, that sorta thing, but Yurika would just go with the flow, happy in her own world. I was surprised when she asked to come fishing with us. Twice, even! The third time I didn’t wait for her to ask, I just told her we were going.”

Ohno takes this in, and that night over dinner with Sadao and Yurika he watches them as they bob slightly off-tempo to the music from the TV, realises how lonely Sadao must look when he goes home after work and thinks nobody is looking, realises how Yurika must be trying to step up, to fill the shoes of her brother and to offer companionship to her father in the wake of her mother’s absence.

“Dad, do you realise Satoji was my age when he was on TV?”

Yurika’s eyes are big in wonder, and she turns them on Ohno.

“Satoji — what if you didn’t quit showbiz?”

Yurika’s question isn’t abrupt; they’re watching a music programme and there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

“It wasn’t for me,” Ohno replies softly. “There was a lot of pressure to perform, I got yelled at a lot, and sometimes there wouldn’t be anyone around to watch the performances. It wasn’t a bed of roses.”

“But you were good.”

“A lot of people were.”

This earns him a stare from Yurika.

“When I was in elementary school and Mum went back to work, Grandma would look after me on weekday afternoons. We’d watch recordings of the shows you appeared in. Did you know that?”

Ohno shakes his head. It's the first time he's hearing about this.

“There was this song you sang that we loved and we’d keep replaying.” Yurika pauses to hum the melody.

“I think that’s ‘Kimi Dake Ni’ by Shonentai,” Sadao says excitedly. “I’ve seen that recording! Grandma likes to show it off, doesn’t she?”

“She does!” exclaims Yurika. “I think that’s how all the afternoon screenings started.”

Memories flood Ohno. The metallic smell of the microphone, the lights, the audience, the joy.

There's a smile in Yurika's moaning. “Man, I wish you stuck it out. More people need to see your talent.”

***

Yurika’s words haunt Ohno.

There’d been a time when he had indeed wished for more people to see what he was capable of. But those feelings were accompanied by a dread to wake up and face an incredibly long day of performing to an empty hall. Ohno didn't understand why he had to put up with performing just for himself. To be an entertainer meant he had to have people to entertain in the first place.

TV work was fine, but he didn’t have a lot of that. The agency put him in live performances. He didn’t have a say in the matter.

And so what if he could sing and dance? There were dozens of others who could do the same, dozens who were waiting to do what he did. He liked performing but he just didn’t like what it entailed.

When he quit the talent agency he’d buried all those feelings, but now it’s almost as if they’ve been awakened by Yurika, that magical child.

In his mind race a number of disjointed memories that are somewhat connected to all this but how exactly, he can’t say: his dad and his sister working out a schedule to pick him up from performance venues so he could sleep in the car and catch up on homework when he got home; his zipper getting stuck during a quick-change between the scenes of a live show; the friends he’d made and left behind in showbiz; the loss he felt on his first day of his first ‘real’ job at the stationery store, when he realised he wasn’t going to be on that stage again.

He’s never really stopped dancing; he joined a dance circle in his youth all the way until his early thirties, then Sadao approached him with a business idea and the fishing tackle shop was born. 

Now he just dances at home whenever he feels like it, which is something like twice a week.

Ohno tosses and turns in bed before getting up. He switches on the lights, plays some music, and starts to stretch.

***

Winter passes and they welcome spring.

One day, Yurika flies into the tackle store and throws her phone under Ohno’s nose, saying:

“There’s an idol audition for men under 40 and I totally think you should go.”

Ohno has a flashback to a day when he was still frightfully young, and Natsumi had come home from her part-time job, handed Ohno an application form, saying what Yurika has just said, almost verbatim.

“What’s this about?” Ohno asks calmly, and scrolls through the page on Yurika’s phone.

“It’s an audition to become a Joshima & Associates idol, Satoji. They’re the guys who produce Evergold. You know. That boyband.”

“And you like Evergold?”

“Kinda. I haven’t decided yet. My friend Mari is in the process of converting me. I think that Nakajima guy is quite cute.”

Ohno looks at Sadao. “She thinks a boy is attractive. We’re losing her.”

Sadao just gives Ohno a pained smile before looking at his daughter.

“Just come back on weekends, okay?”

Yurika rolls her eyes and takes her phone back from Ohno. “Well?” she asks, eyeing her uncle.

“Well what?”

“Are you going to sign up for this? If you win the contest you get to debut in an idol unit — this means there’s definitely going to be more than one winner. There’s more than one spot up for grabs, Satoji. You have to do this.”

Ohno laughs and says there’s no way he wants to be an idol at 37, but as the words depart his mouth a wave of dissonance crashes upon him — it’s absolute honesty, he realises, as his brain disagrees completely with what he’s saying.

“Then I’m going to sign up for you,” Yurika answers simply, and the entire exchange is eerily like the one he had with his sister more than 20 years ago.

He doesn’t protest when Yurika takes his picture (“You’re so lucky I’m in the photography club”) and submits the application form online. Ohno tries to make it look like he’s treating the whole thing as a joke, like he’s just trying to make his favourite niece (his only niece) happy. He also tries really hard to forget that auditions are the fourth of June.

***

“I think she’s projecting or something,” Sadao says after they say goodbye to one of their regular customers.

Sometimes Sadao speaks like this, enigmatic and without a clear train of thought.

“Who is?” asks Ohno.

“Yurika. With the whole idol audition thing. Your idol audition thing.”

Ohno blinks. “…Okay…?”

“She’s in this place,” Sadao makes a vague hand gesture, “you know, trying to take care of things. To be the nurturing one in the family.”

“And she’s projecting it on me?”

“Looks like it. She’s convinced you haven’t given up on your teenage dream and she wants to see you succeed.”

Ohno doesn’t say anything. He arranges the clear pockets that hold the lure designs and slots them back into the file, save for the one their customer has decided upon.

“What do you think, Nii-san?” he says finally.

Sadao looks as though he’s been waiting for the longest time for Ohno to ask him this.

“I think,” he starts slowly, “you should go for the audition. Just do that, at least. We’re really hoping you get to perform again.”

Ohno heard the ‘we’ — he’s guessing his parents have been in touch.

“Natsumi would be behind you all the way too, you know,” Sadao says, and Ohno picks up on the wistfulness.

“And if I get through the audition?” Ohno challenges. “If I end up winning the contest? What about business?”

“You’ll still own half this store, and I have children. You might not know this but they’re incredibly cheap labour.”

“Well, can your children paint lures?”

“We can outsource. It’s what most places do, anyway. You know that.”

Sadao is looking mysterious and happy and confident.

Ohno sighs. “You’re serious?”

“I am.” Sadao smiles. “Yes, Satoshi. This is my blessing. Go forth and idol.”

***

_Summertime —_

“Oh my God! Sakurai-kun?!” Yurika jumps up in surprise as Ohno leads Sho into the store from the backdoor. They’ve just finished an interview in Ohno’s workshop, and Ohno wants to introduce Sho to his family.

Sadao laughs as Yurika darts behind him and hides her face.

“We’ve been keeping up with your internet broadcasts,” Sadao informs from behind the register. “You’re her favourite.”

Sho looks embarrassed. Ohno refrains from making any ‘see-you-have-fans-now’ comments; he knows Sho is still in a fragile place, understands that Sho probably wants to be a journalist just as much as he wants to be an idol.

Instead, Ohno says:

“Yurika, d’you wanna tell Sho-kun why you like him?”

Yurika lets out a strangled noise before answering:

“You didn’t say he was coming over!”

“That was kind of the point.”

Yurika later manages to shake Sho’s hand, muttering something about wanting to cut her hand off and preserve it and then calling herself an idiot, and it particularly interesting for Sadao and Ohno, who’ve never seen this side of her before.

It’s almost noon when Ohno walks Sho to the bus stop; he’s going to interview Nino next, and Nino lives more than an hour away from Mitaka. Sho’s going to have quite a bit of travelling to do.

“Can I write about your family in the article?” asks Sho. “Since they were such a big part of your participation in the contest and all.”

Ohno considers this. “I hope you don’t mind, but if we’re going to be in the public eye I’d like to have my family remain out of it.”

“Got it.” Sho nods.

They walk in silence for a while until Sho says:

“You must see a lot of your sister in your niece, Satoshi-kun.”

They’re good enough friends by now for Sho to read Ohno like this, and if it had come from anyone else Ohno might have thought the statement presumptuous, but this is Sho.

“Yeah. I do. If it weren’t for her, nothing would’ve happened. You and I wouldn’t even have met, come to think of it!” Ohno realises out loud.

Sho smiles. “She must be so happy that you’re pursuing your dreams.”

Sho didn’t specify who ‘she’ was, but it doesn’t matter. 

Ohno meets Sho’s gaze and grins.

“Yeah. She must be.”


End file.
